


Cycle

by bittersweetmelodie



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-17 18:21:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14194944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittersweetmelodie/pseuds/bittersweetmelodie
Summary: Because she's too good at running away, and they're too good at being left behind; a Blake character study of sorts.





	Cycle

**Author's Note:**

> The first part touches on Blake and Adam's relationship, so warnings for a bit of violence, I guess.

“Adam, stop!” she yells as she brings Gambol Shroud up to block him. But his attack is so powerful that she is forced to dig her heels into the ground to stop herself from being blown away. It seems like their relationship has always been like that – him constantly pushing and pushing and _pushing_ , and her digging her heels uselessly into the ground and trying not to be blown away by the sheer force of him. And she _hates_ it.

He doesn’t give her a chance to recover from the blow before he is bearing down on her again, his sword pushing hard against her own. “How do you expect to win a war fighting like that, sweetheart?” In one swift movement, he knocks her off her feet and flips his chokutō, slamming the hilt into her stomach with so much force that it sends her flying.

She lands roughly, her face hitting the mud, the rain pouring down relentlessly around her. She struggles to breathe through the blood dripping from her nose, and the metallic taste in her mouth as she pushes herself to her hands and knees. She brings a hand to her nose and stares at the blood on her fingers, her head spinning. Blood dribbles down her chin and she watches dazedly as red splatters the ground, mixing with the mud, before being washed away by the rain.

“Get up, my darling” he orders, his voice calm, as he levels his sword at her. “We aren’t done yet.”

She _knows_ she can’t win, because if he really wanted to, he could easily slice through her katana with his blade. Their battles always end the same way, with her bleeding and broken on the ground, and him standing above her. But it’s like she wants to prove that she can do it, prove that she’s strong enough, and she tries to push herself to her feet, spots swimming in her vision. Pain surges through her and she blacks out, only for a minute, but it’s long enough for her to stagger and fall back to the ground. When her vision clears, she finds herself staring at Adam’s mask, and she _can’t tell_ if he’s concerned for her wellbeing or if he’s satisfied with how beat up she is, and that _scares_ her.

He pulls her into his arms, and the gentleness of the action is such a huge contrast to the violence of their fight that she nearly startles out of his arms. “I’m sorry. Did I push you too far?”

It’s not the first time he’s asked her that question; it isn’t the first time he’s pushed her to the point of aura depletion during a fight, and she’s sure it won’t be the last. Her answer is always the same. “No,” she whispers. She screws her eyes shut and hisses in pain when he brushes his hand against the bruise on her stomach. She clings to him and wonders when things had changed, when it went from him telling her _‘I’ll always protect you’_ to her wondering if he would protect her from himself.

Because most of the scars and bruises on her body are from _him_. It had been gradual – first, it was just a backhanded slap that left a mark that lasted for a couple minutes, then it was a punch a cross her jaw that left a bruise that lasted for a few days, then it was a slash across her arm that left a scar that’s still there today. He doesn’t wait for the bruises and scars to go away before new ones take their place. She hadn’t noticed then, because it had always been in the context of a spar, but she can see it now in the scars on her arms, her back, her torso. She can see it in the blood she coughs out _days_ after their fights are over and done.  

She lets him press a kiss against her lips, and if he’s a little rougher than he usually is, she doesn’t say anything. He pulls her to him, his nails digging painfully into her back, and bites her lip hard enough to draw blood.

She kisses him back, and there’s a sense of urgent desperation, because she’s trying _so hard_ to remember why she fell in love with him. She’s trying to hold on to the last strands of what they used to be – what _he_ used to be – but it feels like trying to hold sand, and he’s slipping right through her fingers.

* * *

 

She stands on the edge of the train car, golden eyes boring into the face of his mask.

She’s conflicted, because this is _Adam_. Adam, who took care of her when her parents left, and she refused to go with them. Adam, who told her, once upon a time, that he would always love and protect her, who held her as she cried after her first kill. Adam, who told her she was everything he ever wanted and that they would make the world a better place _together_.

This is Adam, who wouldn’t hesitate to throw her against a wall, or slam the hilt of his chokutō against her, despite knowing that she has almost no Aura left. Adam, who took out his anger on her when a mission didn’t go as he planned. Adam, who pushed and pushed until she couldn’t push back anymore. Adam, who would pull her into his arms after a rough fight, and whisper comforting words in her ear. Words that made her feel like maybe the person she fell in love with is still in there somewhere.

But he changes. She knows it in the bruises that line her body, and the scars hidden beneath her clothes. She knows it in the way he doesn’t hesitate to attack, hurt, _kill_ innocent people, all to make a statement. She knows it in the way he holds her, rough and aggressive and painfully tight.

She changes too. She knows it in the way guilt pools in her stomach and eats away at her conscience, even as she justifies his actions to herself. She knows it in the way his kisses start tasting bitter and wrong on her tongue. She knows it in the way he doesn’t let her take his mask off the way he used to, like he’s trying to hide who – _what_ – he’s become, and she doesn’t think she’ll recognize the person underneath anymore.

She’s tired of watching him kill innocent people, tired of lying to herself, of justifying his actions and of pretending that nothing is wrong. She can’t stand this endless, pointless cycle of pain – they fight, she bleeds and hurts and cries, they kiss and make up, and it starts all over again. He’s not the person she fell in love with, and the White Fang isn’t an organization of peace. Not anymore.

So she reaches up and draws Gambol Shroud, her hand tightening around its hilt. “Goodbye,” she says with a note of finality in her voice. She brings her weapon down, separating the two train compartments. And she feels like she’s severing herself from Adam, from the White Fang, cutting all emotional ties. But that’s a _lie_. She knows that he’s been too big of a part of her life for her to be able to completely separate herself from that, and there’s a sinking feeling in her chest that tells her she hasn’t seen the last of him yet.

She watches him drift further and further away until he finally disappears. There’s a bittersweet taste in her mouth, and a hole in her chest, because she’s glad – so, _so_ glad – that she escaped, but the White Fang was her entire _life._ And in spite of everything, she still feels _guilty_ for leaving Adam (her mentor, her partner, her lover), for leaving Ilia, for leaving her _family_. But she hasn’t felt this free in a very long time, and she thinks she can probably live with the guilt.

* * *

 

The first couple weeks are the hardest. She is so used to having Adam and Ilia at her side, and suddenly they aren’t there anymore. She didn’t realize how much she’s come to rely on Adam during fights, and defending herself against Grimm is a lot more difficult when it’s just her. And she’s so _full_ of negative emotions – with fear, and loneliness, and doubt – that she seems to be constantly surrounded by Grimm.

She learns to defend herself because her life depends on it. An ursa teaches her to never turn her back to the enemy, because Adam is not there to watch her back anymore. A boarbatusk and a nevermore teach her to be aware of her surroundings at all times, because Adam is not at her side, and there is nobody to defend her but herself.

She doesn’t really know what to do with herself. She’s been a part of the White Fang for as long as she can remember, and it’s all she’s ever known. She can’t go home; the guilt weighs too heavily on her, and she can’t face her parents yet, not after the angry words she threw at them in a fit of rage, not after all the things she’s done.

She applies for Beacon Academy, because Huntsmen and Huntresses are noble, brave and selfless, and she has to do something to undo some of the violence that she had a hand in creating.

There’s nowhere she can go where people won’t judge her for the ears on top of her head, so she dons a bow and wears it like a shield, hiding who she is and what she’s done, and hopes she’s making the right choice.

* * *

 

Learning to work with a new partner is a struggle. Adam has been her only partner ever since he taught her how to fight, and she isn’t as in sync with Yang. She and Adam have fought together for so long that they can read each other like a book, and fight like they’re a single entity. No words are ever needed; she can look at him, and know exactly what he’s going to do next. He’ll give her a nod, and she’ll know what he wants her to do. But everything about Yang is new and different, and she doesn’t know if she can trust her to have her back.

Learning to fight as a team is even harder, and learning to _trust_ them is harder yet. She doesn’t sleep for her first few nights at Beacon – how can she, when she’s surrounded by people she barely knows, and there’s nobody to keep a lookout? It takes her a week and a half to be comfortable enough around them to get a full nights’ rest. The first time Yang casually throws an arm across her shoulders to point something out to her, she draws her weapon and very nearly takes off her arm.

But as the days turn into weeks, and the weeks into months, she learns and grows and heals, until fighting with the rest of Team RWBY starts to become like second nature, and they start to become something of a family to her. She starts to take down some of her walls; she stops looking for something in the shadows that isn’t there; she stops jumping at every small sound. She even lets Yang pull her into a group hug with very little resistance.

But there will _always_ be some walls that she’ll never take down. There are parts of her that she will never willingly let her teammates – her _friends_ – see.

* * *

 

She meets a boy with sunshine in his hair and gold in his heart, who shines brighter than anybody she’s ever known. And she thinks his name – _Sun_ – is befitting, because he radiates warmth and happiness.

She learns about him in bits and pieces over tea and coffee at the quaint little teashop off the docks of Vale; he’s like an open book with nothing to hide. She never has to ask, but he tells her anyways.

She learns that his team is the first real family that he’s ever really had, and even though they’re _crazy_ , he loves them, and would do anything to make sure that they’re safe. She learns that Sage is their team mom, that Neptune is afraid of water, that Scarlet is an annoying idiot.

She learns that his favourite colour is blue, like the ocean on a sunny day. She looks at him, and swears she can see the world reflected in his eyes, and she thinks _her_ favourite colour might be blue too.

She learns that, unlike her, he’s an early riser; he likes to wake up before sunrise and watch the sun come up, because he likes watching the world light up. She thinks it’s fitting, because that’s what he does – he makes the world a brighter place. She remembers Adam telling her once that he likes watching the sun set, because it’s like the world is being cloaked in shadows. And she thinks maybe _that’s_ fitting too.

She knows that he cares for her in a way that’s different than the way he cares for Neptune, or Scarlet, or Sage – he wears his heart on his sleeve, and looks at her with stars in his eyes and treats her with a gentleness that shouldn’t exist in a person who has gone through as much hardship as he has.

She tries to keep her walls up for fear of corrupting him, but he can take them down so much faster than she can put them back up again. So she tells him stories too, not her _whole_ history, but she shares bits and pieces.

She tells him about her parents, how her father is one of the bravest people she knows, and how her mother is one of the sweetest, but she doesn’t tell him about how they left the White Fang, or how she called them _cowards_ (she’s sure he won’t judge her for it, but she’s not sure if she’s ready for him to know that much).

She tells him about how her team, while not her first, has slowly become a family to her. She tells him how Ruby is the baby, even if she is the leader, how Yang would do anything to protect them, how Weiss is strong and independent, despite how she was raised.

But she doesn’t think she’ll ever tell him how much he actually means to her, because he is everything that is pure and bright and good, and she thinks she might break him if she tries to hold him with her bloodstained hands.

* * *

 

She stands on the roof of a nearby building, watching helplessly as Grimm continue to destroy Beacon ( _her home_ , she vaguely registers), and she clenches her fist. She’s been standing there for the past five minutes, because she doesn’t want to go. She hadn’t expected to make friends when she applied to Beacon, but there are people here that she loves more than her own life, people she doesn’t want to leave – Ruby, Weiss, Yang. _Sun_. She feels her heart clenching at the thought of Sun, but it only cements her decision to leave. Adam’s words still echo in her head, and the image of Yang’s severed arm is still fresh in her mind. She _can’t_ put any of them in that kind of danger.

She crouches, ready to make another jump, but she falters when she hears somebody calling out to her. She didn’t think anybody had seen her leave.

“Blake!” Her name echoes and reverberates through the quiet of the night.

She would know that voice anywhere, could pick it out in a crowd of thousands of others, and right now, she thinks it might be the _only_ voice capable of making her stay. She turns, and their eyes meet, blue and gold colliding for just a moment, but that’s all it takes for her to pause. Because, even from 50 feet away, she can see the desperation on his face as he tries to reach her.

He lifts an arm to reach for her, and he opens his mouth, his lips forming her name, and his stance is all too familiar to her. It’s that moment on the train all over again – she’s running, leaving behind everything that she knows, and the one person who might have an inkling of a chance of persuading her to change her mind is trying to get to her. But Sun isn’t wearing a mask, and his face is honest and open, and somehow, that makes it all _worse_. Because it’s a reminder that this time, she isn’t choosing to run – she’s being forced to leave to keep her loved ones safe.

She forces herself to tear her eyes away from his, because she’s afraid that if she watches him a second longer, she’s going to lose all her willpower, and give in to her desire to talk to him. Turning away from Sun is one of the hardest things she’s ever done, but she can’t give him the chance to catch up, because he might be the only person who would be able to convince her to _stay_. He has too much power over her, and she’ll melt in his hands. She would probably give him anything he wants – he only has to ask – and she _can’t_ take that risk.

With a heavy heart, she takes a deep breath and jumps off the roof, his desperate plea following behind her. She can hear him scrambling to follow her as she disappears into the Emerald Forest, but she’s always been too good at running away, and he’s too good at being left behind.

This time, she doesn’t say goodbye.

* * *

 

Sun crashes back into her life when she least expects it – on a boat, thousands of miles from shore, in the middle of a Grimm fight – and she’s not sure why she’s surprised to see him – he would probably follow her to the ends of the earth to make sure she’s safe (and she loves him for it, but she wishes he wouldn’t).

The relief comes first, washing over her in waves. Sun is alive. He was fine when she last saw him, but with Adam’s threat lingering, a million and one things could have happened to him in the time between her running away, and now. So she is relieved to see, with her own eyes, that he is unharmed.

Then it’s fear, because he’s _here_ , and that means he’s not safe. He’s never going to be safe if he’s with her. Because this boy – this boy who spreads warmth and happiness wherever he goes, who can light up an entire room with just his smile – would _die_ to save a girl who isn’t worth saving. She can already see his unconscious body in the back of her mind, and it fills her with cold dread. She _can’t_ let that happen.

Then it’s anger, because she doesn’t know how else to handle the fear. Her words are sharp, and meant to hurt; she’ll do anything – absolutely _anything_ – to keep him away from her, even if it means he will hate her for it. Having him hate her is better than having to see him get hurt because of her. But of course her anger doesn’t work – he always did have the uncanny ability to see through her rough exterior.

It isn’t until much later, when the Grimm has been defeated, and the passengers reassured, that she feels the warmth spreading through her. The hollow feeling of loneliness has been eating at her for the past couple weeks since she left Vale. She didn’t realize that between her team, Sun, and his team, she hasn’t truly been alone for a long time, and now that she is, the silence that surrounds her is deafeningly loud. It’s nice to have somebody to talk to again, and Sun has always made her feel warm and safe and protected.

“Well, I’m coming with you.” He says the sentence like it should be the most obvious route for him to take – to follow her, and protect her – and she doesn’t understand what he sees in her that would be worth risking his life for.

She opens her mouth so say something – to say _you can’t come, it’s not safe,_ or to tell him off, to say something that will make him hate her – but he’s looking at her with eyes the colour of the ocean, and she swallows her words. She was right; he has too much power over her – he makes her weak, and she can’t say no.

* * *

 

She’d been right to be scared, because now he’s bleeding out in front of her, his life fading, his breathing shallow, and his blood flowing from his wound like a river, staining her hands and sleeves a red so deep that she thinks she will never quite get rid of it.

She tears through the night with Sun in her arms, leaving a bloody trail behind her. With each passing second, with each drop of blood that hits the ground, the panic and fear in her throat builds, and she feels like she’s suffocating. By the time she reaches her house, his face is ashen, and she can barely hear his breathing. _Please_ , she thinks, _please,_ please _let him be okay._

“Mom! Dad!” she means for voice to come out much louder, but there isn’t enough air in her lungs, and she can barely manage more than a strangled gasp. She stumbles over the front steps and falls to her knees, desperately clutching Sun to her chest. 

Fortunately, her parents heard her crashing through the front door, and they come running. Her father takes one look at the boy _dying_ in her arms and takes him from her shaking hands to lay him on the couch. He removes Sun’s bloodied shirt to get a better look at the wound.

Kali hands her Sun’s shirt (Sun’s _blood-soaked_ shirt) and moves to obscure her view of Sun’s unconscious body. “Your father and I will take care of Sun’s wound. Why don’t you clean his shirt? If we don’t wash it now, it’ll be impossible to get out later.”

She numbly takes the shirt with frozen fingers and walks over to the kitchen sink as if she’s in a trance. She turns on the water and fills the kitchen sink without really thinking about what she’s doing, and submerges the shirt. But the tears blur her vision, and all she can see is the redness of his blood seeping into the water.  

She sobs quietly to herself, her shoulders trembling violently, as she tries desperately to rub the bloodstain out of his shirt, but no matter how hard she scrubs, she can’t seem to get rid of the deep, _deep_ red. She drops the shirt into the bloodstained water and sinks to the ground. She stares at her shaky hands, the blood water dripping down from her hands to her arms, and she wants to laugh at the irony of it, because now she has Sun’s blood on her hands, both figuratively _and_ literally.  

She doesn’t know how long she sits on the kitchen floor with tears running down her cheeks before her mother comes into the kitchen to get her, a tired smile on her face.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she says. She kneels down next to Blake and gathers her into his arms. “He’s going to be fine.”

“I – I did that to him,” she whispers, stumbling over her words. “ _I_ did that.”

“No, sweetheart, no.” Her mother says, shushing her. “This is _not_ your fault. _You_ weren’t the one who stabbed him.”

_But I might as well have_ , she thinks. She sobs into her mother’s shoulder as her mother combs her hand through her hair and whispers comforting words into her ear.

* * *

 

Sun wakes a few days later in the early afternoon, and her heart nearly leaps out of her chest, because he’s _alive_. She knows he’s alive, but hearing his voice somehow makes it more real.  

He wakes with a lecture about how she’s being stupid and selfish by pushing her friends out, and what is basically a promise to protect her, regardless of what might happen to him.

She’s glad that her mother falls through the door when she does, because if she hadn’t, she might have done something stupid; she might have leaned over and kissed Sun, she might have told him she loves him. And doing that would be dangerous. That’s one more person Adam can use against her; it’s one more reason for Sun to throw himself in front of her.

He wakes to the news that there is a war brewing, and Adam is standing right in the middle of it. This is a crossroads for her, and she has a choice to make.

She can keep running, just as she’s doing now. She has every reason to stay away. Because Adam’s words still haunt her nights, and the image of Sun’s lifeless body might be permanently burned into her mind. Every fibre of her being is screaming at her to _keep him away_. She _can’t_ risk losing him. Not again.

She glances at Sun, and is surprised to see the fiercely determined look on his face. Haven, she remembers, is where he attended school, and if his team was his first real family, then Haven might have been his first real home.

So she can keep running. Or she can go to Mistral and fight against the White Fang. Because this war is so much bigger than her history with the White Fang, her history with Adam. There are so many people at risk, people who might die if she doesn’t do something. After all, isn’t this what she’s been training for?

She stands, her hands clenched into fists, and all eyes are on her. She’s done running. She’s done letting her fears control her, done letting Adam’s words dictate her every move. She can’t keep running from her past and her mistakes; it’s finally time she does something to fix some of what is wrong with the world. And she’ll start with the White Fang.

“No,” she says, her voice hard. “We’re not going to destroy the White Fang. We’re going to _take it back_.”

This time, she doesn’t run, because she feels like she can take on the world with him at her side.

* * *

 

She wakes up to sunlight filtering in through her window, and Sun’s feather-light touch on her bare back, tracing lines and patterns, like her back is a canvas, and he’s drawing a picture. She hums contently as she lets her face drop back onto her pillow, basking in the warm glow of the early morning sunlight.

“Where did you get this scar?” he asks quietly, running a finger gently along a jagged line on the small of her back. He does this a lot – asks about her scars so they can string together the story of her life. But she has so many that there are days when she thinks there will never be enough time for her to tell him about all of them.

She mumbles something into the pillow before pushing herself up onto her elbows and twisting around to see what he’s talking about. “Ursa attack,” she mumbles, her voice still hoarse and grainy from sleep. “It was stupid. I turned my back to it for just a second, and it got me. It was right after I left the White Fang, and I guess I was too used to having Adam there to watch my back. It was just different, fighting by myself, without a partner.”

He presses a soft kiss to the scar and moves on. “What about this one?” He traces a scar that runs from her right shoulder, across her back, all the way down to her left hip.

She stills, because she knows exactly which scar it is, and where it came from. She knows what the scar looks like without having to look in a mirror: a thin, clean line that looks like it was made by the edge of a sharp object.

“Blake?” he asks, his voice concerned, when she doesn’t say anything.

“It was from Adam’s sword,” she finally says. She turns to face him, and his eyes are hard, his jaw clenched. She swallows the lump in her throat. It’s an old scar now, probably almost the colour of her skin and mostly faded, but it won’t ever really disappear. Kind of like Adam, who is nothing but a faded and distant memory, but he’ll always be there.

She closes her eyes and takes a shaky breath. “We had a mission that went wrong in every possible way, and he was –,” she takes a deep breath and gathers the sheets in her hands, clutching them tightly. “He was really angry. It was one of our worse fights, if I could even call it that.” She laughs hollowly, the memory causing her chest to tighten. “It was mostly him attacking, and me trying to defend myself.”  

His hand stills and he goes quiet, the rage rolling off him in waves. “I hate that he did this to you,” he mutters as he brushes his hand along her back. “I hate that –”

“I know, Sun,” she murmurs, shushing him. She hates them too, hates what they stand for, hates what Adam did to her, but they are a part of her, no matter how much she wishes they aren’t.

He presses a soft kiss to her right shoulder blade, where the scar starts, and trails butterfly kisses down her back, along the entire scar, and the action is so tender that it makes her throat close up. “You are more than the scars on your back, or what he did to you. You’re beautiful, Blake” he says, lips brushing against her skin. “Even with the scars. Or maybe because of the scars – they’re proof that you were _stronger_ than him, proof of all the things that you overcame to become the person that you are today.” He leans up and presses his lips against hers. “And I love every part of who you are.”

She smiles against his lips and leans into the kiss. “I love you too.”

Sun makes her feel beautiful again. He traces her scars and kisses her bruises, and treats them like a map. And, in a way, she supposes they _are_ a map, because each scar has a story, and they come together to paint the picture of her life. He leaves bruises too, draws his own map on her skin, not the kind that you get in a fight, but the kind you get along with whispered sweet nothings and entangled limbs, between sweat-soaked sheets, and she thinks maybe having a map on her skin might not be so bad.


End file.
